This is precisely what caused a crisis in faith for me about four years ago. It took me some serious introspection and prayer, but I was finally able to dig up the root cause as my eschatology. The day I started to weed out this kind of eschatology, I also immediately began to experience spiritual healing. I didn’t finally “get over it” until celebrating the Eucharist on Ash Wednesday of last year.

Shawn

Seriously, I don’t know when people started combining random individual verses from these texts but one has to wonder if they ever thought they were full of shit. Moreover, it is interpretations like that which I protest against when I say that “the Bible is not one big book.”

I see your point. I think we would agree that ultimately a focus on the bodily Resurrection and a Restoration of Creation on the Last Day provides more real and concrete comfort for those who believe. But the process of getting people to change their belief away from the standard “we all go to heaven and float around in the sky and become angels, etc, etc, business would create a lot of anxiety and discomfort for sure.

On the other hand, in personal experience at least, all this Tim LaHaye End Times crap breeds fear and existential discomfort, and while most people who believe that stuff wouldn’t admit it, I think they’d be relieved not to have to believe it anymore. Teaching 9th graders, I don’t know if there was a single kid that was taught conservative evangelical eschatology who didn’t dread Jesus coming back, who didn’t look at the news in fear, who wasn’t worried in the back of their mind that they weren’t going to make it in the rapture (who among us hasn’t had the O CRAP, I’ve been left behind moment?). There’s a lot of fear and guilt and self-loathing associated with conservative evangelical eschatology, and I think a lot of people are going to find themselves relieved as that mode of thinking continues to dissipate from today’s Church.

Second, heaven was not thought of as the final destination, but an intermediary step. Jesus told the thief on the cross that they would see each other in Paradise, but this is certainly not where Christ stayed, and neither is it where early Christians believed they would stay after their Resurrection. They thought of it rather as a place of rest (whether literally or metaphorically), a holding area where one’s spirit awaits the Resurrection, and the eternal life to come.

This is probably the number one question traditional Christians have for me when I get to talking about bodily resurrections and the Kingdom of God coming to earth. Quite simply they want to know, “Where’s Grandma right now?” “What’s going to happen to me when I die? Am I going to have to wait until this ‘general resurrection’ dealy at the end of time to see my departed loved ones again?”

They’re questions I haven’t found good answers to yet. Worse, I consider it part of our role as ministers to provide stability and comfort during times of loss. Changing people’s views of Eschatology is so hard because you are quite literally shaking how effectively we can emotionally respond to death, loss and grief.

Is this supposed to somehow prove that you, in fact, were not an unusual child? :0)

What I find humorous about your post, is that my lawn functions precisely as a tournament field for my boys. They even compete in many of the same events, without even knowing the origin of their sporting. I guess I am going to have to get another Boxer-dog, so that we can have a joust and round out the event lineup.

Shawn